What science-as-we-know-it can learn for the 9/11 truth movement |295|

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What science-as-we-know-it can learn for the 9/11 truth movement |295|
by Alex Tsakiris | Dec 1 | Skepticism

Investigative journalist Luke Rudkowski shows us how to talk to power and challenge the status quo.

photo by: Luke Rudkowski

I don’t like Las Vegas very much. Too many grueling COMDEX computer trade shows burned into my memory I suppose. But a few years ago, my wife and I were on our way to the mountains to celebrate our wedding anniversary when we passed a sign outside of Barstow, California telling us Las Vegas was about the same distance away as the Mammoth mountains we were heading toward. I looked at my wife, she looked at me, and soon were heading into the desert.

On the way, I started calling for reservations. “Sure,” I was told, plenty of rooms at the Bellagio. In fact, how about a complementary room upgrade and dinner reservation at their exclusive, new restaurant. It was all “no problem,” I was told. They seemed very eager to have us.

Then again, it was Friday, September 14, 2001. Three days after those planes flew into those buildings in New York. No one was going to Vegas for the weekend.

In retrospect, our care-free weekend at a time when so many were suffering sounds callous, and insensitive. But the truth is, I didn’t feel very connected to the events of 9/11. In fact, I didn’t feel very connected to world events, local events, or much of anything other than what was going on in my little personal bubble. I had constructed a worldview that made me feel okay, and part of it involved accepting this “scientific” idea that I was separate from the people and events around me.

My Skeptiko interviews with some of the world’s leading consciousness researchers and thinkers gradually changed my opinion about how interconnected we really are; and over the years my interest in investigating the craziness of science-as-we-know-it and the absurdity of big picture science led me to re-examine other beliefs. I took a fresh look at what the mainstream media had told me about geo-politics and compared it what I was learning about the “deep state.” The lies, cover-ups and disinformation I discovered went way beyond what I ever imagined. And while the learning process was painful, it also came with an unexpected silver lining — the discovery of a brave, highly-creative group of do-it-yourself investigative journalists who had found a way to talk to power like no one before.

Today on Skeptiko we’re going to find out why this act of talking to power and challenging authority is not only the answer to moving toward a better and more just political system, but also the ONLY way to unmask the nitwits who’ve crippled science-as-we-know-it with a ridiculous soul crushing materialism we talk so much about on this show:
 
New festive outro music! And 9/11! :D

Question at end of interview: "How do you handle your own paradigm busting truth moments? What was that like for you?"

My first such paradigm busting truth moment was horrible. I was 19 and a fully committed young earth creationist when I started debating evolution on EvCforum.net. Confronting evidence that my beliefs were false caused me to get mean and nasty, but fortunately I worked through it with some patient forum members and came to question everything I'd ever been taught. This was INCREDIBLY depressing at the time because the only alternative to fundamentalist Christianity appeared to be nihilistic materialism. After some months I decided that I must be real because I think. And whatever I experienced must be real in some sense. Meaning then must be real because I experienced it, and therefore goodness was real and I felt goodness when I read the words of Jesus, so I got back into Christianity. But the seeds of skepticism and philosophy were planted and grew and I eventually left it again, but this time, thanks in large part to Skeptiko, I was not faced with the false dichotomy of Christianity or nihilistic materialism and migrated to the SBNR (spiritual but not religious) group. The transition out of Christianity wasn't extremely easy since it had always been the source of my social life, and I was a prayer counselor and played with the worship team. I met with the pastor a few times to discuss my newly formed radical beliefs and then just sort of disappeared one day and never came back.

The next paradigm busting event was difficult, but not so painful. They get easier as you go on. The next one was learning that 9/11 was an inside job and the war on terror was a sham. Before that I had been a Bush supporter and raised with a very pro-establishment pro-military mindset. I've now migrated to a strong libertarian position, but can't quite make the leap to anarchism.

As Alex said, truth seeking is addictive. One thing leads to another. A person might start off questioning 9/11 or evolution or creation and wind up god knows where! I believe that curiosity is one of the must undervalued virtues of all.

Also, relevant to the main themes of Skeptiko, here's Luke interviewing Icke on the subject of consciousness, reality, elite conspiracy, and DMT:
The bit about DMT starts around 8:30 where Luke states that he's done DMT.
 
Question at end of interview: "How do you handle your own paradigm busting truth moments? What was that like for you?"

I can't say I've ever had such a moment. I've had mini-moments, take for example a few years ago when I came across info on the web about a past acquaintance of mine. Back around '74 or '75 I was at university here in the UK and would go to this pub quite often and meet up with the same crowd. One guy had a car (not many students did in those days), and I'd invite him back for coffee; if he accepted the invitation, that would mean, of course, that I'd get a lift up to the top of the bloody great hill where my digs were, despite it being a detour on his way home.

Well, this guy never refused coffee as far as I can recall. And I can remember wondering why, but the truth never occurred to me until I discovered the guy had recently been on a gay demo. Blow me down! He must have gone out of his way to come back for coffee because he fancied me, but he never said anything, and so I was quite unaware of it. It's just as well, because I'd probably have reacted by stopping going to that particular pub to avoid future embarrassment. Straight guys weren't all that comfortable about associating with gay guys in those days.

I'm sure we all have little experiences like that where many years after the event, the penny dropped. But when it comes to paradigm busting moments, not so much: it's more the steady grind of introspection and intuition and maybe a small experience here and there. The paradigms don't explode, so much as gradually crumble, and one wakes up one day realising one has changed: no longer accepts that one knows anything for sure.
 
I can't say I've ever had such a moment. I've had mini-moments, take for example a few years ago when I came across info on the web about a past acquaintance of mine. Back around '74 or '75 I was at university here in the UK and would go to this pub quite often and meet up with the same crowd. One guy had a car (not many students did in those days), and I'd invite him back for coffee; if he accepted the invitation, that would mean, of course, that I'd get a lift up to the top of the bloody great hill where my digs were, despite it being a detour on his way home.

Well, this guy never refused coffee as far as I can recall. And I can remember wondering why, but the truth never occurred to me until I discovered the guy had recently been on a gay demo. Blow me down! He must have gone out of his way to come back for coffee because he fancied me, but he never said anything, and so I was quite unaware of it. It's just as well, because I'd probably have reacted by stopping going to that particular pub to avoid future embarrassment. Straight guys weren't all that comfortable about associating with gay guys in those days.

I'm sure we all have little experiences like that where many years after the event, the penny dropped. But when it comes to paradigm busting moments, not so much: it's more the steady grind of introspection and intuition and maybe a small experience here and there. The paradigms don't explode, so much as gradually crumble, and one wakes up one day realising one has changed: no longer accepts that one knows anything for sure.

I'm sure you're irresistible Michael... But he may have just liked coffee?
 
The transition out of Christianity wasn't extremely easy since it had always been the source of my social life, and I was a prayer counselor and played with the worship team. I met with the pastor a few times to discuss my newly formed radical beliefs and then just sort of disappeared one day and never came back.

thx for sharing this... I totally get what your saying. I haven't been a "Christian" for a pretty long time, but kept trying to find a way to make it fit... mainly because there are so many good people on that path. but I think I've kinda passed another marker on my journey thru Christianity this year... as you might detect from a couple of the shows :)
 
I can't say I've ever had such a moment. I've had mini-moments, take for example a few years ago when I came across info on the web about a past acquaintance of mine. Back around '74 or '75 I was at university here in the UK and would go to this pub quite often and meet up with the same crowd. One guy had a car (not many students did in those days), and I'd invite him back for coffee; if he accepted the invitation, that would mean, of course, that I'd get a lift up to the top of the bloody great hill where my digs were, despite it being a detour on his way home.

Well, this guy never refused coffee as far as I can recall. And I can remember wondering why, but the truth never occurred to me until I discovered the guy had recently been on a gay demo. Blow me down! He must have gone out of his way to come back for coffee because he fancied me, but he never said anything, and so I was quite unaware of it. It's just as well, because I'd probably have reacted by stopping going to that particular pub to avoid future embarrassment. Straight guys weren't all that comfortable about associating with gay guys in those days.

I'm sure we all have little experiences like that where many years after the event, the penny dropped. But when it comes to paradigm busting moments, not so much: it's more the steady grind of introspection and intuition and maybe a small experience here and there. The paradigms don't explode, so much as gradually crumble, and one wakes up one day realising one has changed: no longer accepts that one knows anything for sure.
good story :) another version of the gradual crumble is the flip-flop... I've done that.
 
I think flip-flopping is normal/natural/healthy... don't know why it gets such a bad name :)

Mostly because in common-usage it's associated with pols often changing their position primarily to garner more votes.
 
The paradigms don't explode, so much as gradually crumble, and one wakes up one day realising one has changed: no longer accepts that one knows anything for sure.
This. Absolutely. As I stated on another thread, Truth, it seems, can also be defined as nothing more than a state of superposition. And it changes depending on the observer.

Truth seeking is addictive, but maybe because it's so elusive. You can never....quite....seem....to.....catch it!
 
This. Absolutely. As I stated on another thread, Truth, it seems, can also be defined as nothing more than a state of superposition. And it changes depending on the observer.

Truth seeking is addictive, but maybe because it's so elusive. You can never....quite....seem....to.....catch it!

I think that truth seeking is one of the highest forms of expression of Spirit. I see spirit as motion or e-motion of an identity... the animating life force expressed through change... and this spirit rides on the boundary between order and chaos or the Logos and the Abyss. I've mentioned that several times on this forum so maybe it is getting old... but I wrote a blog post trying to gel my thoughts on it here.

Truth seeking is the result of the virtue of curiosity. Curiosity is what draws a spirit to the boundary of knowledge. The boundary of knowledge lies between what is known and ordered and logical and what is unknown and chaotic and nonsensical - the Abyss or the Bottomless Pit. To jump off the "deep end" results in insanity and destruction. To hover safely inside the boundary results in stasis and stagnation and solidifying into form until there is petrification and embrittlement of the spirit. The most alive a spirit can be is when traveling right along the boundary - the very place where creation is happening. At that place there is neither stagnation nor darkness and insanity - but there a spirit surfs on the wave of truth as it propagates through the creation of reality. Staying on the edge is dangerous. Curiosity is dangerous. You can sometimes fall off the edge into the unknown. But the reward of riding this boundary is always worth the risk.
 
Haha! Evolution seems to be gateway for many people. That's where mine started. I was in the middle of obtaining my BS degree in Medical Technology. I was an atheist/materialist who thought Big Science held all the answers. Then I saw the documentary "No Intelligence Allowed" with Ben Stein.

I had always believed in the basic principles of ET (still do mostly), but I was absolutely dumbstruck that the NSF would destroy one of their own, just for proposing an alternative hypothesis. I thought "WTH?! Science thrives and progresses on the introduction of alternative theory, when did asking questions become unscientific?" From there I went to a web forum I frequented and asked the members there about the documentary. Let's just say their response to the documentary and toward me, just for bringing it up, was incredibly eye opening. I was attacked as though I were some backwoods, toothless nitwit with barely a kindergarten education. Me! I was one of them! I'm educated! I love science, so why were they attacking me? I thought. And well, it progressed from there.

I quickly learned that as long as you support the status quo and don't question what the intellectuals from on high tell you, your golden. But step out of line with any of those pesky "questions" and your on the first bus to the infidel territories.

I had never, EVER questioned the 9/11 narrative. I thought the "truthers" were a bunch of weirdos with too much time on their hands. And I had seen a documentary or two, but nothing that really convinced me. But a funny thing happened. The more I read and watched, the more it became clear that something in the whole 9/11 narrative wasn't right. I can't pinpoint a moment where I became convinced it was an inside job, in truth I'm still not there. I don't know if it's a matter of it being a true false flag event or merely a situation our government knew about and used to further their own agenda. But once you've peeked behind the curtain, it's hard to go back.

It's hard to unknow what you know, even if you want to. I think flip flopping happens because you see the machinations behind these events, and it's too much to take in, so you wish to go back to where you believed the lie. But your conscience won't let you. It gnaws at the back of your mind, eventually pushing you forward to really "find the truth". Only you don't really find truth, you find more lies and then more lies until your whole sense of how the world works is entirely upended, and you don't know what, if anything is true anymore.

I think this is also why so many don't persue such a path. You have to be ready to have everything you think you know, everything you thought you believed to vanish into nothing right before your very eyes. It's unnerving, it's uncomfortable. Most prefer the old adage: Ignorance Is Bliss.
 
I think that truth seeking is one of the highest forms of expression of Spirit. I see spirit as motion or e-motion of an identity... the animating life force expressed through change... and this spirit rides on the boundary between order and chaos or the Logos and the Abyss. I've mentioned that several times on this forum so maybe it is getting old... but I wrote a blog post trying to gel my thoughts on it here.

Truth seeking is the result of the virtue of curiosity. Curiosity is what draws a spirit to the boundary of knowledge. The boundary of knowledge lies between what is known and ordered and logical and what is unknown and chaotic and nonsensical - the Abyss or the Bottomless Pit. To jump off the "deep end" results in insanity and destruction. To hover safely inside the boundary results in stasis and stagnation and solidifying into form until there is petrification and embrittlement of the spirit. The most alive a spirit can be is when traveling right along the boundary - the very place where creation is happening. At that place there is neither stagnation nor darkness and insanity - but there a spirit surfs on the wave of truth as it propagates through the creation of reality. Staying on the edge is dangerous. Curiosity is dangerous. You can sometimes fall off the edge into the unknown. But the reward of riding this boundary is always worth the risk.

Excellent post Hurmenatar! Yes, riding that edge, that is certainly how it feels and how I've often heard others refer to it. That feeling like you're on the cusp, and if your not careful, you could totter right off the edge into insanity. Carl Jung had an experience much like this. He began having visions just before the start of WW1, and he thought he was going insane. So he started to write down his experience, complete with drawings and references to mythological figures that factored into these visions. This is what eventually became Liber Novus or The Red Book. I've only begun to read it, but it's fascinating so far. His experience had a profound effect on how he treated his patients and likely had a lot to do with his profound influence on psychology.

But back to this boundary. It is like riding along that fuzzy boundary where solid form is no longer so solid. Where the edges of reality and imagination converge, and one cannot so easily be delineated from the other.
 
Haha! Evolution seems to be gateway for many people. That's where mine started. I was in the middle of obtaining my BS degree in Medical Technology. I was an atheist/materialist who thought Big Science held all the answers. Then I saw the documentary "No Intelligence Allowed" with Ben Stein.

I had always believed in the basic principles of ET (still do mostly), but I was absolutely dumbstruck that the NSF would destroy one of their own, just for proposing an alternative hypothesis. I thought "WTH?! Science thrives and progresses on the introduction of alternative theory, when did asking questions become unscientific?" From there I went to a web forum I frequented and asked the members there about the documentary. Let's just say their response to the documentary and toward me, just for bringing it up, was incredibly eye opening. I was attacked as though I were some backwoods, toothless nitwit with barely a kindergarten education. Me! I was one of them! I'm educated! I love science, so why were they attacking me? I thought. And well, it progressed from there.

Interesting! :)

I guess I should clarify that I was never fully convinced by the entire theory of evolution either... But I did encounter enough evidence to falsify my previous belief in a 6000 year old earth where the fossil record was created by the global flood. A better understanding of radiometric dating, a better understanding of buried canyons, and learning about point mutations and endogenous retroviruses was the kicker that caused me to throw in the towel on my literal Genesis creation myth beliefs. After that I quit debating it, and just started debating whether God exists and what is the meaning of life.
 
Haha! Evolution seems to be gateway for many people. That's where mine started. I was in the middle of obtaining my BS degree in Medical Technology. I was an atheist/materialist who thought Big Science held all the answers. Then I saw the documentary "No Intelligence Allowed" with Ben Stein.

I had always believed in the basic principles of ET (still do mostly), but I was absolutely dumbstruck that the NSF would destroy one of their own, just for proposing an alternative hypothesis. I thought "WTH?! Science thrives and progresses on the introduction of alternative theory, when did asking questions become unscientific?" From there I went to a web forum I frequented and asked the members there about the documentary. Let's just say their response to the documentary and toward me, just for bringing it up, was incredibly eye opening. I was attacked as though I were some backwoods, toothless nitwit with barely a kindergarten education. Me! I was one of them! I'm educated! I love science, so why were they attacking me? I thought. And well, it progressed from there.

I quickly learned that as long as you support the status quo and don't question what the intellectuals from on high tell you, your golden. But step out of line with any of those pesky "questions" and your on the first bus to the infidel territories.

I had never, EVER questioned the 9/11 narrative. I thought the "truthers" were a bunch of weirdos with too much time on their hands. And I had seen a documentary or two, but nothing that really convinced me. But a funny thing happened. The more I read and watched, the more it became clear that something in the whole 9/11 narrative wasn't right. I can't pinpoint a moment where I became convinced it was an inside job, in truth I'm still not there. I don't know if it's a matter of it being a true false flag event or merely a situation our government knew about and used to further their own agenda. But once you've peeked behind the curtain, it's hard to go back.

It's hard to unknow what you know, even if you want to. I think flip flopping happens because you see the machinations behind these events, and it's too much to take in, so you wish to go back to where you believed the lie. But your conscience won't let you. It gnaws at the back of your mind, eventually pushing you forward to really "find the truth". Only you don't really find truth, you find more lies and then more lies until your whole sense of how the world works is entirely upended, and you don't know what, if anything is true anymore.

I think this is also why so many don't persue such a path. You have to be ready to have everything you think you know, everything you thought you believed to vanish into nothing right before your very eyes. It's unnerving, it's uncomfortable. Most prefer the old adage: Ignorance Is Bliss.
No Intelligence Allowed is a very powerful film - I didn't watch a lot of it because for me now, it only tells me what I know - that science has really lost its way - in evolution and many other fields. I wonder how I would have reacted to it when I was strictly materialist. Unfortunately, I rather think I would have found it made me uncomfortable, and I'd have drowned it out with some good scientific reading! Alternatively, perhaps I would have said to myself that science is rational, but individuals can fall short of rationality sometimes.

My mother used to say that Christianity was never at fault, it was just bad human beings that sometimes applied it wrongly!

I think one transformative moment for me was when it was becoming increasingly obvious that Global Warming was simply awful science, and the scientific establishment simply stood shoulder to shoulder behind it! They simply gave the green light to the idea that those who 'deny' global warming are idiots or somehow have an axe to grind!

David
 
I think that truth seeking is one of the highest forms of expression of Spirit. I see spirit as motion or e-motion of an identity... the animating life force expressed through change... and this spirit rides on the boundary between order and chaos or the Logos and the Abyss. I've mentioned that several times on this forum so maybe it is getting old... but I wrote a blog post trying to gel my thoughts on it here.

Truth seeking is the result of the virtue of curiosity. Curiosity is what draws a spirit to the boundary of knowledge. The boundary of knowledge lies between what is known and ordered and logical and what is unknown and chaotic and nonsensical - the Abyss or the Bottomless Pit. To jump off the "deep end" results in insanity and destruction. To hover safely inside the boundary results in stasis and stagnation and solidifying into form until there is petrification and embrittlement of the spirit. The most alive a spirit can be is when traveling right along the boundary - the very place where creation is happening. At that place there is neither stagnation nor darkness and insanity - but there a spirit surfs on the wave of truth as it propagates through the creation of reality. Staying on the edge is dangerous. Curiosity is dangerous. You can sometimes fall off the edge into the unknown. But the reward of riding this boundary is always worth the risk.

Ha... I had a very clever and logical father for whom truth (and not lying) was a huge part of who he was. My mother is a definately seeker, she never finds what she's looking for, it's the seeking itself which is important... whatever wacky idea was going around she would go after it. I can remember me and my siblings sitting with cardboard pyramids above our heads to 'direct the energy'...

I'm definately 50% of both of them, seeking truth, not lying, trying to be logical, open to ideas...

As for epiphanies, I've had lots of them...
 
I really like what Luke R. is doing. Thanks for the interview!

I've had a number of paradigm busting moments as well. One of the first ones was reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffen. It exposes the fraud that is our money system and the Federal Reserve. It sparked an intense period for me of studying money and the economy. I completely changed how I saved money. I began to save money in physical gold and silver.
 
I can remember me and my siblings sitting with cardboard pyramids above our heads to 'direct the energy'...
The problem is that when you really get into SKEPTIKO, it is much harder to decide to decide what ideas really are wacky! I mean, it no longer seems reasonable to me to dismiss everything that is symbolic because such things may do things on a non-material plane - so pyramids above your head might come in that category.

Sexual kissing is also purely symbolic. It does absolutely nothing at the physical level (except perhaps spread a few germs) but it obviously does a lot on some other plane of existence!

I do wish we could cleanly separate energy measured in Jules, from other meanings of energy - though to be fair, ordinary language created the word first, and perhaps of the subtle secularisation of the world has to do with taking ideas like energy and giving them a restricted meaning.

Consider an experiment in which you compare a fat child eating some crisps between meals and an athletic slim child tearing round a race track. From a strictly scientific point of view, if you measured their energy destructively in a bomb calorimeter (don't try the experiment at home!), the fat child would have more energy. We should always remember that the scientific meaning of a word can be substantially different from its normal meaning.

David
 
I think that truth seeking is one of the highest forms of expression of Spirit. I see spirit as motion or e-motion of an identity... the animating life force expressed through change... and this spirit rides on the boundary between order and chaos or the Logos and the Abyss.
So you see Spirit almost as if it is a construct of the physical? To my knowing, the physical is one expression of spirit (primary consciousness). There is no seeking - just expression and experiencing. There is no "truth" or "non-truth" - there is ongoing creation.
 
So you see Spirit almost as if it is a construct of the physical?

No. I suppose that I see spirit as a moving point of sense having identity and creative expression. Its interface with the physical is analogous to the wind in the trees which is capricious, unseen, and animates the leaves and limbs as it moves through.

To my knowing, the physical is one expression of spirit (primary consciousness).

That works. I am thinking of the physical as an expression of the Logos which is the Spirit's projection of pattern, faith, sanity, and light.

There is no seeking - just expression and experiencing.

That's one way to live your life.

There is no "truth" or "non-truth" - there is ongoing creation.

That's true.
 
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